I can wire a solar cell from an old calculator to a flash light bulb and make it work.

I can purify urine to make it drinkable and salt water to make it suitable for crops using little more than an old pot and a shirt.

I can cleanly (and quickly) clean an animal carcass and butcher my own meat.

I am proficient with small arms (and all manner of weapons to be honest).

These are the things that I chose to do while my contemporaries were busy learning hirable skills... skills that would make them of some value to the system that is STILL currently in place, and will no doubt be in 2013.

While I was busy learning how to grow crops using only local, organic means, my contemporaries were making business contacts and networking.

They were learning calculus and accounting principles while I was read books deciphering (incorrectly as it turns out) Mayan texts and hieroglyphics speaking about the coming End of the Age.

While they ate ecstasy and dancing nihilistically to drum n bass, I was in rank "sweat lodges" (built by new age shitheads who, it turns out, were laughing their asses off at my blind pursuits of ancient hidden doctrines they had majikally come to them through the ethers of time supposebly thought some chance encounter with an ancient earth spirit ironically enough while rhythmically dancing nihilistically at some drug fueled all night rave) eating shit grown hallucinogens to find answers from my long dead grandmother as to the secrets of the universe.

While I was busy working out escape routes from my city (three by foot, two by car), my friends were all busy mapping out ways for them to be successful and prosperous in a world that WAS NOT ravaged by 5000 year old prophecies of Doomsdays and global suffering en mass.

All of which leads me to where I find myself now...

My friends are all moving on with their lives- married with homes, kids, and careers- I found myself facing a reality that I had never thought I would be facing.

I have a basement (which I had to dig myself as Florida- being so close to sea level- it’s not all that common and/or accepted to have one) filled with survival needs and no calamity to put them towards.

How 2012 failed me...

I have been eating sweet potatoes for the past four weeks. I have been doing so because the date on the can is drawing close and I like to keep my horde under close watch. It's one thing to lose your cache of food and ammo to invading raiders you were unable to fight off or something...

It's quite another to be burned by freshness dates.

Signs of a total lack of organization... something I have been working for the better part of a decade to rid myself of.

The disorganized won't make it once the world's bumper pads are lifted...

Any zombie movie will tell you that.

You need a plan to make it, and plans need organization to flourish.

Simple as that.

So what if for the fifth night this week you have to find a use for sweet potato that you have not already grown sick of preparing (let alone eating).

Your BMs are orange and fibrous.

You skin a tinged yellow.

I start to understand what those inmates mean on those locked up shows when they talk about the prison food as just a means to keeping the machine running...

My only solace was that I should remember the sweetness and the texture of the auburn root as all I had to look forward to was the watery mess that was canned green beans (what I would be looking forward to in the coming weeks as they were next on the list).

I had bought such abundance, taking advantage of a sale on the canned good during thanksgiving some years back, anticipating the coming end. I can even remember thinking to myself how these nasty green beans would end up being my prison currency while I adapted to the hunter part of the new hunter/gather dynamic we will be adapting to once the system fails.

Advertisement

What Do You Think

Gay Marriage....

Is too important an issue for the Government to leave to the hands of the people... Should be a state's rights issue where the voice of the people will be heard... Isn't going to matter a hill of beans once the Chinese roll their tanks down the Pacific Coast Highway...